The Brotherhood of the Rose by David Morrell

 

(pb; 1984: first book in the Abelard Sanction quadrilogy)

From the back cover

“They were orphans, Chris and Saul—raised in a Philadelphia school for boys, bonded by friendship, and devoted to a mysterious man called Eliot.

“He visited them and brought them candy.

“He treated them like sons.

“He trained them to be assassins.

“Now he is trying desperately to have them killed.”

 

Review

Brotherhood is an excellent, hard-to-set-down thriller with characters worth rooting for (from the get-go), character-based action (with explanations of how characters set traps and why they fight the way they fight), and an all-around tautly penned storyline—what makes Brotherhood stand out from its typical-genre set-up is Morrell’s detailed-but-not-yawnable explanations of fighting styles, strategies and mindsets as well as how characters set traps. This is a great read, one of the best conspiracy/violence novels I’ve read in a long while, a promising start to a quadrilogy (two novels and a short story). Followed by The Fraternity of the Stone.

Fun fact: according to the Internet, David Morrell said Eliot is “based a real CIA counter-espionage master, James Jesus Angleton”.

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The resulting two-part television/NBC miniseries, Brotherhood of the Rose, aired on January 22-23, 1989. Gy Waldron wrote its screenplay; Marvin J. Chomsky directed it.

Peter Strauss played Saul Grisman, aka Romulus. David Morse played Chris Killmoonie, aka Remus. Robert Mitchum played John Eliot. Connie Selleca played Erika Bernstein, Saul’s ex-lover and Mossad agent. M. Emmet Walsh played the alcoholic former agent Hardy.